âWe did two takes of the song, and itâs performed in front of a pretty big crowd,â Demme remembered. âAnd by that point, Meryl wasnât even looking at the strings, she was just playing.
âOzymandiasâ is at first glance a sonnet about the transitory nature of life and its pretensions of fame and fortune. The decaying, ancient statue bears witness to the fact that the pursuit of power and glory for their own sakes are not only fleeting, but they are also illusory, unworthy ambitions even within the lifetime of their seekers.
Harpist and singer Joanna Newsom indirectly references the poem in her 2015 song Sapokanikan, in contrast to the forbidding colossus of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias..  1 Statue of Liberty National Monument. 2  Lazarus, Emma, The New Colossus, Liberty State Park.